Demigod is early

Frogboy

As some people know, Gamestop violated the street date of Demigod and released it last week. There have been plenty of discussions about whether Gamestop did this intentionally or not which I won’t go into here.

Obviously there have been some significant consequences as a result:

First, it was Easter weekend. And many of us had just finished a good solid 8 weeks of massive crunch and were looking forward to the weekend to recover. Instead, we found ourselves back at work having to turn on and configure the multiplayer matchmaking servers (we had enough for a beta but not for thousands of people).

Second, since Demigod has zero copy protection on it, it meant that that piracy on this title will, in theory, be maximized. Stardock’s position on piracy is pretty straight forward but to repeat it here: It’s not that we don’t think piracy is massive. We just aren’t convinced that it results in that many lost sales. Or more to the point, we don’t think intrusive, obnoxious copy protection will result in more sales than we lose from people who don’t want to mess with it.

Imagine if Demigod had shipped with some nasty retail copy protection and got released early. Someone “cracks” it but doesn’t do a good job and the game ends up crashing randomly or something. Most people would just assume the game was buggy and that would likely cause more lost sales than the initial piracy did.

The good news, however, is that we’ll get to actually see the effects of piracy. Since we know Demigod is an outstanding game with a wide appeal with equal retail and digital distribution to other titles that came out this year with similar demographics we can see how well it sells compared to them.

Third, while the game won’t be on the shelves at other retailers until tomorrow morning, we have elected to make the digitally distributed version available today with beta testers and pre-order customers getting it immediately (as in right now). Those who have legally purchased the game can get the 0-day update that has all the game play changes that the beta group asked for, multiplayer match-making, and LAN support.

I want to thank the Stardockians who came in on their day off (we are supposed to have the Monday after Easter off) to make sure people who pre-ordered got the game today as well as the beta testers.

May I assume that some elite Drengin "lawyers" have been dispatched to "settle" the matter with Gamestop?

Wasn't it also Gamestop that released Dawn of War 2 early in Australia? (causing all sorts of activation havoc on Steam) Seems like this is getting to be standard policy more and more. Maybe they had good results in the Australia flap? (ie. the early release nabbed more profits away from competitors than it incurred fines)

I've seen other companies use the same trick of accepting the legal consequences of broken contractual clauses because the competitive advantage was worth more. And I've always thought of it as being a sickeningly underhanded trick even when it's done to companies I don't like.

Two things. First I've started a craze at work about this game with few WoW(a)dicts (ex recovering one here) and two I have promtly bought the game and signed up for impulse moment I read. DEMIGOD IS EARLY! I was going to pick it up tomorrow from local EB anyway but this is way better.

you can also blame target, they sold it early to, but i think their's might have been a misunderstanding

I checked my local target on the way back from work. The guy at electronics said they won't have it on the shelves till tomorrow b/c of the release date. Told him about that one target, and he said it must just have been that local one. It's in their database not to release to the 14th. Same with Fry's.

Well, I'm not sure I'm going to 'get' the game, but I think I'll support you guys (Stardock GPG) anyway and purchase it. From everything I've read and the vids I've watched, I think it might supply some good quick MP fun.... and even if it doesn't work out for me, I can always rationalise my purchase as a single fingered salute to GS, support for Impulse and Stardock/GPG.

I work in a retail store which carries software and console video games. It is widely known within this company that Gamestop "makes street dates" and it knows it cannot be punished because a refusal for Gamestop to carry any products can be the death knell for many publishers (Microsoft, for example, follows their lead on release dates.) We are currently down some 30-50% in sales on video games and software due to digital distribution, lack of support (not worth the time, due to sales, to merchandise/display products), and street dates being broken/exclusive availability.

By and large we have titles by the street date, or at least the week of. For example, we got 3 regular copies of Demigod today, and one Collector's edition (which I set aside to purchase tomorrow.) The way the market (for this type of product) works for us is that we take an immediate full hit on something we markdown even a fraction, so our incentive is to sell it as soon as possible (or it sits until we write it off, which takes years, while it takes up dollars for the store.) This alone makes the corporation very wary of bringing in niche titles. I think we did rather well with Sins, so we're less wary of Stardock overall (hence four copies of a software title, which is outrageous, we got one copy of the new Riddick game.)

I just wanted to say that I will do my damndest to sell every copy of Demigod that comes through my store. The $39.99 price point is going to help, and I will sell it to anyone who meets the requirements. Thanks for being the kind of publisher you are, and know that you have a few friends in retail.

Well, my BD is in 2 hours; so I thought I'd never see it as a BD gift, but, WOW, I did get it today. What a surprise. Too bad it messed up the poor SD guys week. At least I know now why I can't get MP to work. And did I read right, DG has NO copy protection??? I had to register mine; you meant it had no "CD Copy" protection? I have another off topicish question. When I installed it my main computer, I had to register it, but when I installed it on my second computer for Lan play (it has a totally different email) it just installed without asking me anything??? It's great, but I guess I'm currious why it seem to have cared less about the serial # the second instal . . .

Well, my BD is in 2 hours; so I thought I'd never see it as a BD gift, but, WOW, I did get it today. What a surprise. Too bad it messed up the poor SD guys week. At least I know now why I can't get MP to work. And did I read right, DG has NO copy protection??? I had to register mine; you meant it had no "CD Copy" protection? I have another off topicish question. When I installed it my main computer, I had to register it, but when I installed it on my second computer for Lan play (it has a totally different email) it just installed without asking me anything??? It's great, but I guess I'm currious why it seem to have cared less about the serial # the second instal . . .

Demigod has no on CD copy protection. You are required to register to download the patch... and that's it. That's all. No restrictive DRM of any kind.